Denmark’s foreign minister said on Tuesday, January 21, that no country should be able to simply help themselves to another country, following US President Donald Trump’s renewed remarks about taking control of Greenland.
Trump, who took office on Monday, set off alarm bells in early January by refusing to rule out military intervention to bring the Panama Canal and Greenland – which is an autonomous Danish territory – under US control.
“Of course, we can’t have a world order where countries, if they’re big enough, no matter what they’re called, can just help themselves to what they want,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told reporters Tuesday.
While he didn’t mention Greenland in his inauguration speech on Monday, Trump was asked about it by reporters in the Oval Office afterward.
‘We need it’
“Greenland is a wonderful place, we need it for international security,” Trump responded. “I’m sure that Denmark will come along – it’s costing them a lot of money to maintain it, to keep it,” he added.
Read more Subscribers only Diplomatic crisis over Greenland intensifies between Denmark and future Trump administration
Lokke said he was “satisfied” that Trump had not cited Greenland as a priority in his speech, but added that the “rhetoric” was the same. “It doesn’t make me call off any crisis, because he said other things about expanding the American territory,” Lokke told Danish media. Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede has insisted “that Greenland is not for sale” but that the territory was open to doing business with the United States.
On Monday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a post on Instagram that Europe would need to “navigate a new reality.” While noting the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination, the head of government also stressed the need for Denmark to maintain its alliance with the US – which she described as Denmark’s most important since World War II.
A number of Danish party leaders were called to the prime minister’s office on Tuesday to be briefed on the situation.
“We have to recognize that the next four years will be difficult years,” Pia Olsen Dyhr, leader of the Green Left, told reporters after meeting with Frederiksen.
Read more Subscribers only Trump’s second term begins with a salvo of executive orders mainly targeting climate and immigration
Reuse this content
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=678fc2238b5a48e7a1b9aa603c859e15&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lemonde.fr%2Fen%2Finternational%2Farticle%2F2025%2F01%2F21%2Fdenmark-says-no-country-can-just-help-themselves-to-greenland_6737261_4.html&c=15070869442826186120&mkt=de-de
Author :
Publish date : 2025-01-21 05:45:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
